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Social Media

Social
mediaarecomputer-mediatedtechnologies that
allow the creating and sharing ofinformation, ideas,
career interests and other forms of expression viavirtual communitiesandnetworks. The
variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available
introduces challenges of definition. However, there are some common features.

1.Social media are
interactiveWeb 2.0Internet-based
applications.

2.User-generated content, such as text posts or comments,digital photosor videos, and data
generated through all online interactions, are the lifeblood of social media.

3.Users create
service-specific profiles for the website orappthat are designed
and maintained by the social mediaorganization.

4.Social media
facilitate the development of onlinesocial networksby connecting a
user's profile with those of other individuals and/or groups.

Social
media useweb-basedand mobile
technologies onsmartphonesandtablet computersto create highly
interactive platforms through which individuals, communities and organizations
can share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content or pre-made
content posted online. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to
communication between businesses, organizations, communities and individuals.Social media
changes the way individuals and large organizations communicate. These changes
are the focus of the emerging field oftechnoselfstudies. In
America, a survey reported that 84 percent of adolescents in America have a
Facebook account.

Social
media differ from paper-based or traditional electronic media such asTV broadcastingin many ways,
including quality,reach,
frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Social media operate in a
dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers).This is in contrast
totraditional mediawhich operates
under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers), such as a
paper newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers. Some of the most
popular social media websites areFacebook(and its associatedFacebook
Messenger),WhatsApp,Tumblr,Instagram,Twitter,Baidu Tieba,Pinterest,LinkedIn,Gab,Google+,YouTube,Viber,Snapchat,WeiboandWeChat. These social
media websites have more than 100,000,000 registered users.

Observers
have noted a range of positive and negative impacts from social media use.
Social media can help to improve individuals' sense of connectedness with real
and/or online communities and social media can be an effective communications
(or marketing) tool for corporations, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations,
including advocacy groups and political parties and governments. At the same
time, concerns have been raised about possible links between heavy social media
use anddepression, and even
the issues ofcyberbullying,
onlineharassmentand "trolling".
Currently, about half of young adults have been cyberbullied and of those, 20
percent said that they have been cyberbullied on a regular basis.Another survey was
carried out among 7th grade students in America which is known as the
Precaution Process Adoption Model. According to this study 69 percent of 7th
grade students claim to have experienced cyberbullying and they also said that
it is worse than face to face bullying.According
to Nielsen, Internet users continue to spend more time on social media sites
than on any other type of site. At the same time, the total time spent on
social media sites in the U.S. across PCs as well as on mobile devices
increased by 99 percent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 66
billion minutes in July 2011.For
content contributors, the benefits of participating in social media have gone
beyond simply social sharing to building reputation and bringing in career
opportunities and monetary income.

Over
60% of 13 to 17-year-olds have at least one profile on social media, with many
spending more than two hours a day on social networking sites.

Definition and classification

The
variety and evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services introduces
a challenge of definition.The idea that
social media are defined by their ability to bring people together has been
seen as too broad a definition, as this would suggest that thetelegraphandtelephonewere also social
media – not the technologies scholars are intending to describe.The terminology is
unclear, with some referring to social media associal networks.

A
2015 paperreviewed
the prominent literature in the area and identified four commonalities unique
to then-current social media services:

1.social media areWeb 2.0Internet-based
applications,

2.user-generated content(UGC) is the
lifeblood of the social media organism,

3.users create
service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained
by the social media organization,

4.social media
facilitate the development of onlinesocial networksby connecting a
user's profile with those of other individuals and/or groups.

In
2016,Merriam-Websterdefined social
media as "Forms of electronic communication (such as Web sites) through
which people create online communities to share information, ideas, personal
messages, etc."

The
term social media is usually used to describe social networking sites such as:

1.Facebook – an
online social networking site that allows users to create their personal
profiles, share photos and videos, and communicate with other users

2.Twitter – an internet
service that allows users to post "tweets" for their followers to see
updates in real-time

3.LinkedIn – a
networking website for the business community that allows users to create
professional profiles, post resumes, and communicate with other professionals
and job-seekers.

4.Pinterest – an
online community that allows users to display photos of items found on the web
by "pinning" them and sharing ideas with others.

5.Snapchat – an app
on mobile devices that allows users to send and share photos of themselves
doing their daily activities.

Social
media technologies take many different forms includingblogs,business networks,enterprise social networks,forums,microblogs,photo sharing,products/services review,social
bookmarking,social
gaming,social networks,video sharing, andvirtual worlds.The development of
social media started off with simple platforms such as sixdegrees.com.Unlike instant
messaging clients such as ICQ and AOL's AIM, or chat clients like IRC, iChat or
Chat Television, sixdegrees.com was the first online business that was created
for real people, using their real names. However, the first social networks
were short-lived because their users lost interest. The Social Network
Revolution has led to the rise of the networking sites. Researchshows that the
audience spends 22 percent of their time on social networking sites, thus
proving how popular social media platforms have become. This increase is
because of the smart phones that are now in the daily lives of most humans.

Distinction from other media

Virality

Some
social media sites have greater potential for content that is posted there to
spreadviralityover social
networks. This is an analogy to the concept of aviralinfectious
diseaseinbiology, some of
which can spread rapidly from an infected person to another person. In a social
media context, content or websites that are "viral" (or which
"go viral") are those with a greater likelihood that users will
reshare content posted (by another user) to their social network, leading to
further sharing. In some cases, posts containing controversial content (e.g.,Kim Kardashian's
nude photos that "broke the Internet" and crashed servers) or
fast-breaking news have been rapidly shared and re-shared by huge numbers of
users. Many social media sites provide specific functionality to help users
reshare content – for example,Twitter's retweet
button,Pinterest's pin
function,Facebook's share
option orTumblr's reblog
function.Businesseshave a particular
interest inviral marketingtactics because
such a campaign can achieve widespread advertising coverage (particularly if
the "viral" reposting itself makes the news) for a fraction of the
cost of a traditional marketing campaign (e.g., billboard ads, television
commercials, magazine ads, etc.)Nonprofit organisationsandactivistsmay have similar
interests in posting content online with the hopes that it goes viral. The
social news websiteSlashdotsometimes has news
stories that, once posted on its website, "go viral"; theSlashdot effectrefers to this
situation.

Mobile use

Mobile
social media refers to the use of social media on mobile devices such assmartphonesandtablet computers. This
is a group of mobile marketing applications that allow the creation, exchange
and circulation of user-generated content.Due to the fact
that mobile social media run on mobile devices, they differ from traditional
social media by incorporating new factors such as the current location of the
user (location-sensitivity) or the time delay between sending and receiving
messages (time-sensitivity). According toAndreas Kaplan,
mobile social media applications can be differentiated among four types:

1.Space-timers(location and time
sensitive): Exchange of messages with relevance mostly for one specific
location at one specific point in time (e.g.Facebook Places;Foursquare)

2.Space-locators(only location
sensitive): Exchange of messages, with relevance for one specific location,
which are tagged to a certain place and read later by others (e.g.Yelp;Qype,Tumblr,Fishbrain)

Although
traditional social media offer a variety of opportunities for companies in a
wide range ofbusiness sectors,
economic-sector mobile social-media makes use of the location- and
time-sensitive aspects of social media in order to engage inmarketing
research, communication,sales promotions/discounts,
and relationship development/loyalty programs.

·Marketing
research: Mobile social media applications offer data about offline
consumer movements at a level of detail heretofore limited to online companies.
Any firm can know the exact time at which a customer entered one of its
outlets, as well as comments made during the visit.

·Communication:
Mobile social media communication takes two forms: company-to-consumer (in
which a company may establish a connection to a consumer based on its location
and provide reviews about locations nearby) and user-generated content. For
example, McDonald's offered $5 and $10 gift-cards to 100 users randomly
selected among those checking in at one of its restaurants. This promotion
increased check-ins by 33% (from 2,146 to 2,865), resulted in over 50 articles
and blog posts, and prompted several hundred thousand news feeds and Twitter
messages.

·Sales promotions
and discounts: Although customers have had to use printed coupons in the past,
mobile social media allows companies to tailor promotions to specific users at
specific times. For example, when launching its California-Cancun service,
Virgin America offered users who checked in through Loopt at one of three
designated Border Grill taco trucks in San Francisco and Los Angeles between 11
a.m. and 3 p.m. on August 31, 2010, two tacos for $1 and two flights to Mexico
for the price of one.

·Relationship
development and loyalty programs: In order to increase long-term relationships
with customers, companies can construct loyalty programs that allow customers
who check-in regularly at a location to earn discounts or perks. For example,
American Eagle Outfitters remunerates such customers with a tiered 10%, 15%, or
20% discount on their total purchase.

·e-Commerce: Social
media sites are increasingly implementing marketing-friendly strategies,
creating platforms that are mutually beneficial for users, businesses, and the
networks themselves in the popularity and accessibility of e-commerce, or
online purchases. Mobile social media applications such asAmazon.comandPinteresthave started to
influence an upward trend in the popularity and accessibility of e-commerce, or
online purchases.

E-commercebusinesses may
refer to social media asconsumer-generated media(CGM). A common
thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of
technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

People
obtain valuable information, education, news, and other data from electronic
and print media. Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media
such as newspapers, magazines, television, and film as they are comparatively
inexpensive and accessible. They enable anyone (even private individuals) to
publish or access information. Industrial media generally require significant
resources to publish information as in most cases the articles go through many
revisions before being published. This process adds to the cost and the
resulting market price.

Originally
social media was only used by individuals but now it is used by businesses,
charities and also in politics.

One
characteristic shared by both social and industrial media is the capability to
reach small or large audiences; for example, either a blog post or a television
show may reach no people or millions of people.Some of the
properties that help describe the differences between social and industrial
media are:

1.Quality: In
industrial (traditional) publishing—mediated by a publisher—the typical range
of quality is substantially narrower than in niche, unmediated markets. The
main challenge posed by content in social media sites is the fact that the
distribution of quality has high variance: from very high-quality items to
low-quality, sometimes abusive content.

2.Reach: Both
industrial and social media technologies provide scale and are capable of
reaching a global audience. Industrial media, however, typically use a
centralized framework for organization, production, and dissemination, whereas
social media are by their very nature more decentralized, less hierarchical,
and distinguished by multiple points of production and utility.

3.Frequency: The
number of times an advertisement is displayed on social media platforms.

4.Accessibility: The
means of production for industrial media are typically government and/or
corporate (privately owned); social media tools are generally available to the
public at little or no cost.

5.Usability:
Industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training.
Conversely, most social media production requires only modest reinterpretation
of existing skills; in theory, anyone with access can operate the means of
social media production.

6.Immediacy: The time
lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days,
weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of
virtually instantaneous responses).

7.Permanence:
Industrial media, once created, cannot be altered (once a magazine article is
printed and distributed, changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas
social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.

Community
media constitute a hybrid of industrial and social media. Though
community-owned, some community radio, TV, and newspapers are run by
professionals and some by amateurs. They use both social and industrial media
frameworks. Social media have also been recognized for the way they have
changed howpublic relationsprofessionals
conduct their jobs.They
have provided an open arena where people are free to exchange ideas on
companies, brands,and products. As
stated by Doc Searls and David Wagner, two authorities on the effects of
Internet on marketing, advertising, and PR, "The best of the people in PR
are not PR types at all. They understand that there aren't censors, they're the
company's best conversationalists."Social
media provides an environment where users and PR professionals can converse,
and where PR professionals can promote their brand and improve their company's
image by listening and responding to what the public is saying about their
product.

Business performance

Social
media have a strong influence on business activities and business performance.
There are four channels by which social media resources are transformed into
business performance capabilities:

1.Social capital:represents the
extent to which social media affects firms' relationships with society and
increase corporate social performance capabilities.

3.Social marketing:represents the
extent to which social marketing resources (e.g., online conversations, sharing
links, online presence) are used to increase financial capabilities (e.g.,
sales, acquisition of new customers).

4.Social corporate
networking: Social corporate networking refers to the informal
ties and linkages of corporate staff through social networks. Social corporate
networking can increase operational performance capabilities.

There
are four tools that engage experts, customers, suppliers, and employees in the
development of products and services using social media. Companies can use
these tools to improve their business capacity and performance.

1.Customer relationship management

2.Innovation

3.Training

4.Knowledge
management

Management

There
is an increasing trend towards usingsocial media monitoringtools that allow
marketers and companies to search, track, and analyze online conversations on
the Web about their brand or products or about related topics of interest.This can be useful
inpublic relationsmanagement andadvertising
campaigntracking,
allowing the user to measurereturn
on investment, competitor-auditing, and general public engagement.
Tools range from free, basic applications to subscription-based, more in-depth
tools. Social media tracking also enables companies to respond quickly to
online posts that criticize their product or service. By responding quickly to
critical online posts, and helping the user to resolve the concerns, this helps
the company to lessen the negative effects that online complaints can have
about company product or service sales. In the US, for example, if a customer
criticizes a major hotel chain's cleanliness or service standards on a social
media website, a company representative will usually quickly be alerted to this
critical post, so that the company representative can go online and express
concern for the sub-par service and offer the complaining person acouponordiscounton
their next purchase, plus a promise to forward their concerns to the hotel
manager so that the problem will not be repeated.

The
"honeycomb framework" defines how social media services focus on some
or all of seven functional building blocks.[4]These building
blocks help explain the engagement needs of the social media audience. For
instance,LinkedInusers are thought
to care mostly about identity, reputation, and relationships, whereasYouTube'sprimary features
are sharing,conversations,
groups, and reputation. Many companies build their own social
"containers" that attempt to link the seven functional building
blocks around their brands. These are private communities that engage people
around a more narrow theme, as in around a particular brand, vocation or hobby,
rather than social media containers such asGoogle+,Facebook, andTwitter. PR
departments face significant challenges in dealing with viral negative
sentiment directed at organizations or individuals on social media platforms
(dubbed "sentimentitis"), which may be a reaction to an announcement
or event.In
a 2011 article,Jan
H. Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy and Bruno S. Silvestre
describe the honeycomb relationship as "present[ing] a framework that
defines social media by usingseven
functional building blocks: identity,
conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups."

The
elements of the honeycomb framework include:

·Identity:
This block represents the extent to which users reveal their identities in a
social media setting. This can include disclosing information such as name,
age, gender, profession, location, and also information that portrays users in
certain ways.

·Conversations:
This block represents the extent to which users communicate with other users in
a social media setting. Many social media sites are designed primarily to
facilitate conversations among individuals and groups. These conversations
happen for all sorts of reasons. People tweet, blog, make online comments and
send messages to other users to meet new like-minded people, to ﬁnd a romantic
partner, to build their self-esteem, or to be on the cutting edge of new ideas
or trending topics. Yet others see social media as a way of making their
message heard and positively impacting humanitarian causes, environmental
problems, economic issues, or political debates.

·Sharing:
This block represents the extent to which users exchange, distribute, and
receive content, ranging from a short text post to a link or adigital photo. The
term 'social' implies that exchanges between people are crucial. In many cases,
however, sociality is about the objects that mediate these ties between
people—the reasons why they meet online and associate with each other.

·Presence:
This block represents the extent to which users can know if other users are
accessible. It includes knowing where others are, in the virtual world and/or
in the real world, and whether they are available.Some social media
sites have icons that indicate when other users are online.

·Relationships:
This block represents the extent to which users can be related or linked up to
other users. Two or more users have some form of association that leads them to
converse, share objects of sociality, send texts or messages, meet up, or
simply just list each other as a friend or fan.

·Reputation:
This block represents the extent to which users can identify the standing of
others, including themselves, in a social media setting.Reputationcan have different
meanings on social media platforms. In most cases, reputation is a matter of
trust, but because information technologies are not yet good at determining
such highly qualitative criteria, social media sites rely on 'mechanical
Turks': tools that automatically aggregate user-generated information to determine
trustworthiness.Reputation managementis another aspect
and use of social media.

·Groups:
This block represents the extent to which users can form communities and
sub-communities of people with similar backgrounds, demographics or interests.
The more 'social' a network becomes, the wider the group of friends, followers,
and contacts can be developed.

Building "social authority" and vanity

Social
media becomes effective through a process called "building social
authority". One of the foundation concepts in social media has become that
you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you
can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" expecting that
you can achieve a significant influence in that conversation.However, this
conversation participation must be cleverly executed because although people
are resistant to marketing in general, they are even more resistant to direct
or overt marketing through social media platforms. This may seem
counterintuitive but it is the main reason building social authority with
credibility is so important. A marketer can generally not expect people to be
receptive to a marketing message in and of itself. In the Edelman Trust
Barometer reportin 2008, the
majority (58%) of the respondents reported they most trusted company or product
information coming from "people like me" inferred to be information
from someone they trusted. In the 2010 Trust Report,the majority
switched to 64% preferring their information from industry experts and
academics. According to Inc. Technology's Brent Leary, "This loss of
trust, and the accompanying turn towards experts and authorities, seems to be
coinciding with the rise of social media and networks."

Data mining

Social
media "mining" is a type ofdata mining, a
technique of analyzing data to detect patterns. Social media mining is a
process of representing, analyzing, and extracting actionable patterns from
data collected from people's activities on social media. Social media mining
introduces basic concepts and principal algorithms suitable for investigating
massive social media data; it discusses theories and methodologies from
different disciplines such as computer science, data mining, machine learning,
social network analysis, network science, sociology, ethnography, statistics,
optimization, and mathematics. It encompasses the tools to formally represent,
measure, model, and mine meaningful patterns from large-scale social media
data.

Global usage

According
to the article "The Emerging Role of Social Media in Political and Regime
Change" by Rita Safranek, the Middle East and North Africa region has one
of the most youthful populations in the world, with people under 25 making up
between 35-45% of the population in each country. They make up the majority of
social media users, including about 17 millionFacebookusers, 25,000Twitteraccounts and 40,000
active blogs, according to theArab
Advisors Group.

Most popular services

This
is a list of the leading social networks based on number of active user
accounts as of September 2016.

1.Facebook:
1,712,000,000 users.

2.WhatsApp1,000,000,000
users.

3.Facebook
Messenger: 1,000,000,000 users.

4.QQ: 899,000,000
users.

5.WeChat: 806,000,000
users.

6.QZone: 652,000,000 users.

7.Tumblr: 555,000,000
users.

8.Instagram:
500,000,000 users.

9.Twitter: 313,000,000
users.

10.Baidu Tieba:
300,000,000 users.

11.Skype: 300,000,000 users.

12.Sina Weibo:
282,000,000 users.

13.Viber: 249,000,000 users.

14.Line:
218,000,000 users.

15.Snapchat:
200,000,000 users.

Effects of usage for
news purposes

Just
as television turned a nation of people wholistenedto media content
intowatchersof media content,
the emergence of social media has created a nation of mediacontent creators.
According to 2011 Pew Research data, nearly 80% of American adults are online
and nearly 60% of them use social networking sites.More Americans get
their news via the Internet than from newspapers or radio, as well as
three-fourths who say they get news from e-mail or social media sites updates,
according to a report published by CNN. The survey suggests that Facebook and
Twitter make news a more participatory experience than before as people share
news articles and comment on other people's posts. According to CNN, in 2010
75% of people got their news forwarded through e-mail or social media posts,
whereas 37% of people shared a news item via Facebook or Twitter.In the United
States, 81% of people say they look online for news of the weather, first and
foremost. National news at 73%, 52% for sports news, and 41% for entertainment
or celebrity news. Based on this study, done for the Pew Center, two-thirds of
the sample's online news users were younger than 50, and 30% were younger than
30. The survey involved tracking daily the habits of 2,259 adults 18 or older.Thirty-three
percent of young adults get news from social networks. Thirty-four percent
watched TV news and 13% read print or digital content. Nineteen percent of
Americans got news fromFacebook,Google+, orLinkedIn. Thirty-six
percent of those who get news from social network got it yesterday from survey.
More than 36% ofTwitterusers use accounts
to follow news organizations or journalists. Nineteen percent of users say they
got information from news organizations of journalists. TV remains most popular
source of news, but audience is aging (only 34% of young people).

Of
those younger than 25, 29% said they got no news yesterday either digitally or
traditional news platforms. Only 5% under 30 said they follow news about
political figures and events in DC. Only 14% of respondents could answer all
four questions about which party controls the House, current unemployment rate,
what nation Angela Merkel leads, and which presidential candidate favors taxing
higher-income Americans. Facebook and Twitter now pathways to news, but are not
replacements for traditional ones. Seventy percent get social media news from
friends and family on Facebook.

Social
media fosters communication. An Internet research company, PewResearch Center,
claims that "more than half of internet users (52%) use two or more of the
social media sites measured (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest) to communicate
with their family or friends".For
children, using social media sites can help promote creativity, interaction,
and learning. It can also help them with homework and class work.Moreover, social
media enable them to stay connected with their peers, and help them to interact
with each other. Some can get involved with developing fundraising campaigns
and political events. However, it can impact social skills due to the absence
of face-to-face contact.Social
media can affect mental health of teens.Teens
who use Facebook frequently and especially who are susceptible may become more
narcissistic, antisocial, and aggressive. Teens become strongly influenced by
advertising, and it influences buying habits. Since the creation of Facebook in
2004, it has become a distraction and a way to waste time for many users.A head teacher in
the United Kingdom commented in 2015 that social media caused more stress to
teenage children than examinations, with constant interaction and monitoring by
peers ending the past practice where what pupils did in the evening or at
weekends was separate from the arguments and peer pressure at school.

In
a 2014 study, high school students ages 18 and younger were examined in an
effort to find their preference for receiving news. Based on interviews with 61
teenagers, conducted from December 2007 to February 2011, most of the teen
participants reported reading print newspapers only "sometimes," with
fewer than 10% reading them daily. The teenagers instead reported learning
about current events from social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace,
YouTube, and blogs.Another
study showed that social media users read a set of news that is different from
what newspaper editors feature in the print press.Using
nanotechnology as an example, a study was conducted thatstudied tweets fromTwitterand found that some
41% of the discourse about nanotechnology focused on its negative impacts,
suggesting that a portion of the public may be concerned with how various forms
of nanotechnology are used in the future. Although optimistic-sounding and
neutral-sounding tweets were equally likely to express certainty or
uncertainty, the pessimistic tweets were nearly twice as likely to appear
certain of an outcome than uncertain. These results imply the possibility of a
preconceived negative perception of many news articles associated with
nanotechnology. Alternatively, these results could also imply that posts of a
more pessimistic nature that are also written with an air of certainty are more
likely to be shared or otherwise permeate groups on Twitter. Similar biases
need to be considered when the utility of new media is addressed, as the
potential for human opinion to over-emphasize any particular news story is
greater despite the general improvement in addressed potential uncertainty and
bias in news articles than in traditional media.

On
October 2, 2013, the most commonhashtagthroughout the
United States was "#governmentshutdown",
as well as ones focusing on political parties, Obama, and healthcare. Most news
sources have Twitter, and Facebook, pages, like CNN and the New York Times,
providing links to their online articles, getting an increased readership.
Additionally, several college news organizations and administrators have
Twitter pages as a way to share news and connect to students.According to
"Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013",in the US, among
those who use social media to find news, 47% of these people are under 45 years
old, and 23% are above 45 years old. However social media as a main news
gateway does not follow the same pattern across countries. For example, in this
report, in Brazil, 60% of the respondents said social media was one of the five
most important ways to find news online, 45% in Spain, 17% in the UK, 38% in
Italy, 14% in France, 22% in Denmark, 30% in the U.S., and 12% in Japan.Moreover, there are
differences among countries about commenting on news in social networks, 38% of
the respondents in Brazil said they commented on news in social network in a
week. These percentages are 21% in the U.S. and 10% in the UK. The authors
argued that differences among countries may be due to culture difference rather
than different levels of access to technical tools.

History and memory
effects

News
media and television journalism have been instrumental in the shaping of
American collective memory for much of the twentieth century.Indeed, since the
United States' colonial era, news media has influenced collective memory and
discourse about national development and trauma. In many ways, mainstream
journalists have maintained an authoritative voice as the storytellers of the
American past. Their documentary style narratives, detailed exposes, and their
positions in the present make them prime sources for public memory.
Specifically, news media journalists have shaped collective memory on nearly
every major national event – from the deaths of social and political figures to
the progression of political hopefuls. Journalists provide elaborate
descriptions of commemorative events in U.S. history and contemporary popular
cultural sensations. Many Americans learn the significance of historical events
and political issues through news media, as they are presented on popular news
stations.However,
journalistic influence is growing less important, whereas social networking
sites such asFacebook, YouTube
andTwitter, provide a
constant supply of alternative news sources for users.

Associal networkingbecomes more
popular among older and younger generations, sites such as Facebook and
YouTube, gradually undermine the traditionally authoritative voices of news
media. For example, American citizens contest media coverage of various social
and political events as they see fit, inserting their voices into the
narratives about America's past and present and shaping their own collective
memories.An
example of this is the public explosion of theTrayvon Martinshooting in
Sanford, Florida. News media coverage of the incident was minimal until social
media users made the story recognizable through their constant discussion of
the case. Approximately one month after the fatal shooting ofTrayvon Martin, its
online coverage by everyday Americans garnered national attention from
mainstream media journalists, in turn exemplifyingmedia activism. In
some ways, the spread of this tragic event through alternative news sources
parallels that of theEmmitt Till– whose murder
became a national story after it circulated African American and Communists
newspapers. Social media was also influential in the widespread attention given
to therevolutionary outbreaks in the
Middle East and North Africa during 2011.However, there is
some debate about the extent to which social media facilitated this kind of
change.Another
example of this shift is in the ongoingKony 2012campaign, which
surfaced first on YouTube and later garnered a great amount of attention from
mainstream news media journalists. These journalists now monitor social media
sites to inform their reports on the movement. Lastly, in the past couple of
presidential elections, the use of social media sites such as Facebook and
Twitter were used to predict election results. U.S. PresidentBarack Obamawas more liked on
Facebook than his opponent Mitt Romney and it was found by a study done by
Oxford Institute Internet Experiment that more people liked to tweet about
comments of President Obama rather than Romney.

Criticisms

We worry that social media is
kind of the virtual bathhouse—Dr. Lynn
Fitzgibbons, an infectious disease physician Santa Barbara County Public Health
Department

Criticisms
of social media range from criticisms of the ease of use of specific platforms
and their capabilities, disparity of information available, issues with
trustworthiness and reliability of information presented,the impact of
social media use on an individual's concentration,ownership of media
content, and the meaning of interactions created by social media. Although some
social media platforms offer users the opportunity to cross-post
simultaneously, some social network platforms have been criticized for poor
interoperability between platforms, which leads to the creation of information
silos, viz. isolated pockets of data contained in one social media platform.However, it is also
argued that social media have positive effects such as allowing the
democratization of the Internetwhile
also allowing individuals to advertise themselves and form friendships.Othershave noted that the
term "social" cannot account for technological features of a platform
alone, hence the level of sociability should be determined by the actual
performances of its users. There has been a dramatic decrease in face-to-face
interactions as more and more social media platforms have been introduced with
the threat of cyber-bullying and online sexual predators being more prevalent.Social media may
expose children to images of alcohol,tobacco, and sexual
behaviorsIn
regards to cyber-bullying, it has been proven that individuals who have no
experience with cyber-bullying often have a better well-being than individuals
who have been bullied online.

Twitter
is increasingly a target of heavy activity of marketers. Their actions, focused
on gaining massive numbers of followers, include use of advanced scripts and
manipulation techniques that distort the prime idea of social media by abusing
human trustfulness.Twitter
also promotes social connections among students. It can be used to enhance
communication building and critical thinking. Domizi (2013) utilised Twitter in
a graduate seminar requiring students to post weekly tweets to extend classroom
discussions. Students reportedly used Twitter to connect with content and other
students. Additionally, students found it "to be useful professionally and
personally."British-American
entrepreneur and authorAndrew Keencriticizes social
media in his bookThe Cult of the Amateur,
writing, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was
governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law
of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under
these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite
filibustering."This
is also relative to the issue "justice" in the social network. For
example, the phenomenon "Human flesh search engine" in Asia raised the
discussion of "private-law" brought by social network platform.
Comparative media professorJosé van Dijckcontends in her
book "The Culture of Connectivity" (2013) that to
understand the full weight of social media, their technological dimensions
should be connected to the social and the cultural. She critically describes
six social media platforms. One of her findings is the way Facebook had been
successful in framing the term 'sharing' in such a way that third party use of
user data is neglected in favour of intra-user connectedness.

Disparity

Thedigital divideis a measure of
disparity in the level of access to technology between households,
socioeconomic levels or other demographic categories. People who arehomeless, living in
poverty, elderly people and those living in rural or remote communities may
have little or no access to computers and the Internet; in contrast, middle
class and upper-class people in urban areas have very high rates of computer
and Internet access. Other models argue that within a moderninformation
society, some individuals produce Internet content while others only
consume it,which
could be a result of disparities in the education system where only some
teachers integrate technology into the classroom and teach critical thinking.While social media
has differences among age groups, a 2010 study in the United States found no
racial divide.Somezero-ratingprograms offer
subsidized data access to certain websites on low-cost plans. Critics say that
this is an anti-competitive program that underminesnet neutralityand creates a
"walled
garden"for
platforms likeFacebook Zero. A
2015 study found that 65% of Nigerians, 61% of Indonesians, and 58% of Indians
agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet" compared
with only 5% in the US.

Eric Ehrmanncontends that
social media in the form ofpublic diplomacycreate a patina of
inclusiveness that coverstraditional
economic interests that are structured to ensure that wealth is pumped up to
the top of the economic pyramid, perpetuating the digital divide and post
Marxian class conflict. He also voices concern over the trend that finds social
utilities operating in a quasi-libertarianglobal environment
of oligopoly that requires users in economically challenged nations to spend
high percentages of annual income to pay for devices and services to
participate in the social media lifestyle.Neil Postmanalso contends that
social media will increase an information disparity between "winners"
– who are able to use the social media actively – and "losers" – who
are not familiar with modern technologies or who do not have access to them.
People with high social media skills may have better access to information
about job opportunities, potential new friends, and social activities in their
area, which may enable them to improve their standard of living and theirquality of life.

Trustworthiness

Because
large-scale collaborative co-creation is one of the main ways of forming
information in the social network, the user generated content is sometimes
viewed with skepticism; readers do not trust it as a reliable source of
information. Aniket Kittur, Bongowon Suh, and Ed H. Chi took wikis under
examination and indicated that, "One possibility is that distrust of wiki
content is not due to the inherently mutable nature of the system but instead
to the lack of available information for judging trustworthiness."To be more
specific, the authors mention that reasons for distrusting collaborative
systems with user-generated content, such as Wikipedia, include a lack of
information regarding accuracy of contents, motives and expertise of editors,
stability of content, coverage of topics and the absence of sources.

Social
media is also an important source of news. According to 'Reuters Institute
Digital News Report 2013', social media are one of the most important ways for
people find news online (the others being traditional brands, search engines
and news aggregators).The
report suggested that in the United Kingdom, trust in news which comes from
social media sources is low, compared to news from other sources (e.g. online
news from traditional broadcaster or online news from national newspapers).
People who aged at 24-35 trust social media most, whereas trust declined with
the increase of age.

Rainie
and Wellman have argued that media making now has become a participation work,which changes
communication systems. The center of power is shifted from only the media (as
the gatekeeper) to the peripheral area, which may include government, organizations,
and out to the edge, the individual.These
changes in communication systems raise empirical questions about trust to media
effect. Prior empirical studies have shown that trust in information sources
plays a major role in people's decision making. People's attitudes more easily
change when they hear messages from trustworthy sources. In the Reuters report,
27% of respondents agree that they worry about the accuracy of a story on a
blog. However, 40% of them believe the stories on blogs are more balanced than
traditional papers because they are provided with a range of opinions. Recent
research has shown that in the new social media communication environment, the
civil or uncivil nature of comments will bias people's information processing
even if the message is from a trustworthy source,which bring the
practical and ethical question about the responsibility of communicator in the
social media environment.

Concentration

As
media theoristMarshall McLuhanpointed out in the
1960s, media are not just passive channels of information or "dumb pipes".
The media supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of
thought, as captured in his maxim "The medium is the message". For example, in the
1990s and 2000s, the increasing popularity of 24-hour all news channels such asCNNled
to an increasing demand by news organizations for audience-grabbing headlines.
As a result, even minor gaffes or misstatements by celebrities or public
officials were made into leading news stories, to satisfy audience demand.
Thus, in this example, the medium of 24-hour all-news channels started to shape
the "message" that was sent on the media channel.

Passive participation

ForMalcolm Gladwell,
the role of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, in revolutions and
protests is overstated.On
one hand, social media make it easier for individuals, and in this case
activists, to express themselves. On the other hand, it is harder for that
expression to have an impact.Gladwell
distinguishes between social media activism and high risk activism, which
brings real changes. Activism and especially high-risk activism involves
strong-tie relationships, hierarchies, coordination, motivation, exposing
oneself to high risks, making sacrifices.Gladwell
discusses that social media are built around weak ties and he argues that
"social networks are effective at increasing participation — by lessening
the level of motivation that participation requires".According to him
"Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real
sacrifice, but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are
not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice".

Furthermore,
social media's role in democratizing media participation, which proponents
herald as ushering in a new era ofparticipatory democracy, with all users able to
contribute news and comments, may fall short of the ideals. Social media has
been championed as allowing anyone with an Internet connection to become a
content creatorand empowering the "active audience".But international
survey data suggest online media audience members are largely passive
consumers, while content creation is dominated by a small number of users who
post comments and write new content. Othersargue that the
effect of social media will vary from one country to another, with domestic
political structures playing a greater role than social media in determining
how citizens express opinions about "current affairs stories involving the
state". According to the "Reuters Institute Digital News Report
2013", the percent of online news users who blog about news issues ranges
from 1–5%. Greater percentages use social media to comment on news, with
participation ranging from 8% in Germany to 38% in Brazil. But online news
users are most likely to just talk about online news with friends offline or
use social media to share stories without creating content.

Reliability

Evgeny Morozov,
2009–2010 Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University, contends that the information
uploaded to Twitter may have little relevance to the rest of the people who do
not use Twitter. In the article "Iran: Downside to the "Twitter
Revolution"" in the magazineDissent,he says:

"Twitter
only adds to the noise: it's simply impossible to pack much context into its
140 characters. All other biases are present as well: in a country like Iran
it's mostly pro-Western, technology-friendly and iPod-carrying young people who
are the natural and most frequent users of Twitter. They are a tiny and, most
important, extremely untypical segment of the Iranian population (the number of
Twitter users in Iran — a country of more than seventy million people.)"

Even
in the United States, the birth-country of Twitter, currently in 2015 the
social network has 306 million accounts.Because
there are likely to be many multi-account users, and the United States in 2012
had a population of 314.7 million,the
adoption of Twitter is somewhat limited. ProfessorMatthew AuerofBates Collegecasts doubt on the
conventional wisdom that social media are open and participatory. He also
speculates on the emergence of "anti-social media" used as
"instruments of pure control."

Ownership of social
media content

Social
media content is generated through social media interactions done by the users
through the site. There has always been a huge debate on the ownership of the
content on social media platforms because it is generated by the users and
hosted by the company. Added to this is the danger to security of information,
which can be leaked to third parties with economic interests in the platform,
or parasites who comb the data for their own databases.The author ofSocial Media Is
Bullshit,Brandon Mendelson,
claims that the "true" owners of content created on social media
sites only benefits the large corporations who own those sites and rarely the
users that created them.

Privacy

Privacy
rights advocates warn users on social media about the collection of their
personal data. Some information is captured without the user's knowledge orconsentthrough electronic
tracking and third party applications. Data may also be collected for law
enforcement and governmental purposes,bysocial media intelligenceusingdata miningtechniques.Data and
information may also be collected for third party use. When information is
shared on social media, that information is no longer private. There have been
many cases in which young persons especially, share personal information, which
can attract predators. It is very important to monitor what you share, and to
be aware of who you could potentially be sharing that information with. Teens
especially share significantly more information on the internet now than they
have in the past. Teen are much more likely to share their personal
information, such as email address, phone number, and school names.Studies suggest
that teens are not aware of what they are posting and how much of that
information can be accessed by third parties.

Other
privacy concerns with employers and social media are when employers use social
media as a tool to screen a prospective employee. This issue raises many
ethical questions that some consider an employer's right and others considerdiscrimination.
Except in the states of California, Maryland, and Illinois, there are no laws
that prohibit employers from using social media profiles as a basis of whether
or not someone should be hired.Title VIIalso prohibits
discrimination during any aspect of employment including hiring or firing,
recruitment, or testing.Social
media has been integrating into the workplace and this has led to conflicts
within employees and employers. Particularly, Facebook has been seen as a
popular platform for employers to investigate in order to learn more about
potential employees. This conflict first started in Maryland when an employer
requested and received an employee's Facebook username and password. State
lawmakers first introduced legislation in 2012 to prohibit employers from
requesting passwords to personal social accounts in order to get a job or to
keep a job. This led to Canada, Germany, the U.S. Congress and 11 U.S. states
to pass or propose legislation that prevents employers' access to private
social accounts of employees.

It
is not only an issue in the workplace, but an issue in schools as well. There
have been situations where students have been forced to give up their social
media passwords to school administrators.There
are inadequate laws to protect a student's social media privacy, and
organizations such as the ACLU are pushing for more privacy protection, as it
is an invasion. They urge students who are pressured to give up their account
information to tell the administrators to contact a parent and/or lawyer before
they take the matter any further. Although they are students, they still have
the right to keep their password-protected information private.

Many
Western European countries have already implemented laws that restrict the
regulation of social media in the workplace. States including Arkansas,
California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New
Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin have passed legislation that protects
potential employees and current employees from employers that demand them to
give forth their username or password for a social media account.Laws that forbid
employers from disciplining an employee based on activity off the job on social
media sites have also been put into act in states including California,
Colorado, Connecticut, North Dakota, and New York. Several states have similar
laws that protect students in colleges and universities from having to grant
access to their social media accounts. Eight states have passed the law that
prohibits post secondary institutions from demanding social media login
information from any prospective or current students and privacy legislation
has been introduced or is pending in at least 36 states as of July 2013.As of May 2014,
legislation has been introduced and is in the process of pending in at least 28
states and has been enacted in Maine and Wisconsin.In addition, the
National Labor Relations Board has been devoting a lot of their attention to
attacking employer policies regarding social media that can discipline
employees who seek to speak and post freely on social media sites.

There
are arguments that privacy is dead and that with social media growing more and
more, social media users have become quite unconcerned with privacy. Others
argue, however, that people are still very concerned about their privacy, but
are being ignored by the companies running these social networks, who can
sometimes make a profit off of sharing someone's personal information. There is
also a disconnect between social media user's words and their actions. Studies
suggest that surveys show that people want to keep their lives private, but
their actions on social media suggest otherwise.

Effects on
interpersonal relationships

Data
suggest that participants use social media to fulfill perceived social needs,
but are typically disappointed. Lonely individuals are drawn to the
Internet for emotional support. This could interfere with "real life
socializing" by reducing face-to-face relationships.Some of these views
are summed up in an Atlantic article by Stephen Marche entitledIs Facebook Making
Us Lonely?, in which the author argues that social media
provides more breadth, but not the depth of relationships that humans require
and that users begin to find it difficult to distinguish between the meaningful
relationships which we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual
relationships that are formed through social media.Sherry Turkleexplores similar
issues in her bookAlone
Togetheras
she discusses how people confuse social media usage with authentic communication.
She posits that people tend to act differently online and are less afraid to
hurt each other's feelings. Some online behaviors can cause stress and anxiety,
due to the permanence of online posts, the fear of being hacked, or of colleges
and employers exploring social media pages. Turkle also speculates that people
are beginning to prefer texting to face-to-face communication, which can
contribute to feelings of loneliness.Some
researchers have also found that only exchanges that involved direct
communication and reciprocation of messages to each other increased feelings of
connectedness. However, passively using social media without sending or
receiving messages to individuals does not make people feel less lonely unless
they were lonely to begin with.

A
study published in thePublic Library of Sciencein 2013 revealed
that the perception of Facebook being an important resource for social
connection was diminished by the number of people found to have developed low
self-esteem, and the more they used the network the lower their level of
self-esteem.A
current controversial topic is whether or not social media addiction should be
explicitly categorized as a psychological ailment.Extended use of social media
has led to increased Internet addiction, cyberbullying, sexting, sleep
deprivation, and the decline of face-to-face interaction.Several clinics in
the UK classify social media addiction is a certifiable medical condition with
one psychiatric consultant claiming that he treats as many as one hundred cases
a year.Lori
Ann Wagner, a psychotherapist, argues that humans communicate best face to face
with their five senses involved.In
addition, a study on social media done by PhD's Hsuan-Ting Kim and Yonghwan
Kim, suggests that social networking sites have begun to raise concern because
of the expectations people seek to fulfill from these sites and the amount of
time users are willing to invest.

However,
there are also positive effects as there are negative ones. Social media is a
great way to make sure that people know that one is in a relationship or not,
advertising in their about section. This can reduce the complications and
confusions that may have been a problem when social media was not so popular.
It is a great way of sharing big dates that may have occurred in ones life,
such as a pregnancy announcement or engagement. Not all aspects about social
media negatively effect interpersonal relationships. Some aspects encourage the
relationships and build them to be stronger.

Commercialization

As
social media usage has become increasingly widespread, social media has to a
large extent come to be subjected to commercialization by marketing companies
and advertising agencies.Christofer
Laurell, a digital marketing researcher, suggested that the social media
landscape currently consists of three types of places becacuse of this
development: consumer-dominated places, professionally dominated places and
places undergoing commercialization.As
social media becomes commercialized, this process have been shown to create
novel forms of value networks stretching between consumer and producerin which a
combination of personal, private and commercial contents are created.The commercial
development of social media has been criticized as the actions of consumers in
these settings has become increasingly value-creating, for example when
consumers contribute to the marketing and branding of specific products by
posting positive reviews. As such, value-creating activities also increase the
value of a specific product, which could, according to the marketing professors
Bernad Cova and Daniele Dalli, lead to what they refer to as "double
exploitation".Companies
are getting consumers to create content for the companies' websites for which
the consumers are not paid.

Negative effects

There
are several negative effects to social media which receive criticism, for
example regarding privacy issues,information
overloadandInternet fraud.
Social media can also have negative social effects on users. Angry or emotional
conversations can lead to real-world interactions outside of the Internet,
which can get users into dangerous situations. Some users have experienced
threats of violence online and have feared these threats manifesting themselves
offline. Studies also show that social media have negative effects on peoples'
self-esteem and self-worth. The authors of "Who Compares and Despairs? The
Effect of Social Comparison Orientation on Social Media Use and its
Outcomes"found
that people with a higher social comparison orientation appear to use social
media more heavily than people with low social comparison orientation. This
finding was consistent with other studies that found people with high social
comparison orientation make more social comparisons once on social media.
People compare their own lives to the lives of their friends through their friends'
posts. People are motivated to portray themselves in a way that is appropriate
to the situation and serves their best interest. Often the things posted online
are the positive aspects of people's lives, making other people question why
their own lives are not as exciting or fulfilling. This can lead to depression
and other self-esteem issues.

Three
researchers at Blanquerna University, Spain, examined how adolescents interact
with social media and specifically Facebook.They suggest that interactions on
the website encourage representing oneself in the traditional gender
constructs, which helps maintain gender stereotypes.The authors noted
that girls generally show more emotion in their posts and more frequently
change their profile pictures, which according to some psychologists can lead
to self-objectification.On
the other hand, the researchers found that boys prefer to portray themselves as
strong, independent, and powerful.For
example, men often post pictures of objects and not themselves, and rarely change
their profile pictures; using the pages more for entertainment and pragmatic
reasons. In contrast girls generally post more images that include themselves,
friends and things they have emotional ties to, which the researchers
attributed that to the higher emotional intelligence of girls at a younger age.
The authors sampled over 632 girls and boys from the ages of 12-16 from Spain
in an effort to confirm their beliefs. The researchers concluded that
masculinity is more commonly associated with a positive psychological
well-being, while femininity displays less psychological well-being.Furthermore, the
researchers discovered that people tend not to completely conform to either
stereotype, and encompass desirable parts of both. Users of Facebook generally
use their profile to reflect that they are a "normal" person. Social
media was found to uphold gender stereotypes both feminine and masculine. The
researchers also noted that the traditional stereotypes are often upheld by
boys more so than girls. The authors described how neither stereotype was
entirely positive, but most people viewed masculine values as more positive.

Terri
H. Chan, the author of "Facebook and its Effects on Users' Empathic Social
Skills and Life Satisfaction: A Double Edged Sword Effect",claims that the
more time people spend on Facebook, the less satisfied they feel about their
life. Self-presentational theory explains that people will consciously manage
their self-image or identity related information in social contexts. According
to Gina Chen, the author ofLosing
Face on Social Media: Threats to Positive Face Lead to an Indirect Effect on
Retaliatory Aggression Through Negative Affect,when people are not
accepted or are criticized online they feel emotional pain. This may lead to
some form of online retaliation such as online bullying.Trudy Hui Hui Chua
and Leanne Chang's article, "Follow Me and Like My Beautiful Selfies:
Singapore Teenage Girls' Engagement in Self-Presentation and Peer Comparison on
Social Media"states
that teenage girls manipulate their self-presentation on social media to
achieve a sense of beauty that is projected by their peers. These authors also
discovered that teenage girls compare themselves to their peers on social media
and present themselves in certain ways in effort to earn regard and acceptance,
which can actually lead to problems with self-confidence and self-satisfaction.

According
to writer Christine Rosen in "Virtual Friendship, and the New
Narcissism," many social media sites encourage status-seeking.According to Rosen,
the practice and definition of "friendship" changes in virtuality.
Friendship "in these virtual spaces is thoroughly different from
real-world friendship. In its traditional sense, friendship is a relationship
which, broadly speaking, involves the sharing of mutual interests, reciprocity,
trust, and the revelation of intimate details over time and within specific
social (and cultural) contexts. Because friendship depends on mutual
revelations that are concealed from the rest of the world, it can only flourish
within the boundaries of privacy; the idea of public friendship is an
oxymoron." Rosen also cites Brigham Young University researchers who
"recently surveyed 184 users of social networking sites and found that
heavy users 'feel less socially involved with the community around them.'"
Critic Nicholas G. Carr in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" questions how
technology affectscognitionandmemory. "The
kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not
just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the
intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet
spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any
other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw
our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas... If we lose those
quiet spaces, or fill them up with "content," we will sacrifice
something important not only in our selves but in our culture."

Bo
Han, a social media researcher at Texas A&M University-Commerce, finds that
users are likely to experience the "social media burnout" issue.Ambivalence,
emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization are usually the main symptoms if a
user experiences social media burnout. Ambivalence refers to a user's confusion
about the benefits she can get from using a social media site. Emotional
exhaustion refers to the stress a user has when using a social media site.
Depersonalization refers to the emotional detachment from a social media site a
user experiences. The three burnout factors can all negatively influence the
user's social media continuance. This study provides an instrument to measure
the burnout a user can experience, when her social media "friends"
are generating an overwhelming amount of useless information (e.g., "what
I had for dinner", "where I am now").

Positive effects

In
the bookNetworked
– The New Social Operating SystembyLee RainieandBarry Wellman, the
two authors reflect on mainly positive effects of social media and other
Internet-based social networks. According to the authors, social media are used
to document memories, learn about and explore things, advertise oneself and
form friendships. For instance, they claim that the communication through
Internet based services can be done more privately than in real life.
Furthermore, Rainie and Wellman discuss that everybody has the possibility to
become a content creator. Content creation provides networked individuals
opportunities to reach wider audiences. Moreover, it can positively affect
their social standing and gain political support. This can lead to influence on
issues that are important for someone. As a concrete example of the positive
effects of social media, the authors use the Tunisian revolution in 2011, where
people used Facebook to gather meetings, protest actions, etc.Rainie and Wellman
(Ibid) also discuss that content creation is a voluntary and participatory act.
What is important is that networked individuals create, edit, and manage
content in collaboration with other networked individuals. This way they
contribute in expanding knowledge. Wikis are examples of collaborative content
creation.

A
survey conducted (in 2011), by Pew Internet Research, discussed inLee RainieandBarry Wellman'sNetworked – The New
Social Operating System, illustrates that
'networked individuals' are engaged to a further extent regarding numbers of
content creation activities and that the 'networked individuals' are increasing
over a larger age span. These are some of the content creation activities that
networked individuals take part in:

·writing material,
such as text or online comments, on a social networking site such as Facebook:
65% of Internet users do this

·sharingdigital photos: 55%

·contributing
rankings and reviews of products or services: 37%

·creating
"tags" of content, such as tagging songs by genre: 33%

·posting comments on
third-party websites or blogs: 26%

·taking online
material andremixing it into a new creation:
15% of Internet users do this with photos, video, audio, or text

·creating or working
on ablog: 14%

Another
survey conducted (in 2015) by Pew Internet Research shows that the Internet
users among American adults who uses at least one social networking site has
increased from 10% to 76% since 2005. Pew Internet Research illustrates
furthermore that it nowadays is no real gender difference among Americans when
it comes to social media usage. Women were even more active on social media a
couple of years ago, however today's numbers point at women: 68%, and men: 62%.Social media have
been used to assist in searches for missing persons. When 21-year-oldUniversity of Cincinnatistudent Brogan
Dulle disappeared in May 2014 from near his apartment in theCliftonneighborhood ofCincinnati, Ohio,
his friends and family used social media to organize and fund a search effort.The disappearance
made international newswhen
their efforts wentviralonFacebook,Twitter,GoFundMe, andThe
Huffington Postduring
the week-long search. Dulle's body was eventually found in a building next door
to his apartment.

Impact on job seeking

Use
of social media by young people has caused significant problems for some
applicants who are active on social media when they try to enter the job
market. A survey of 17,000 young people in six countries in 2013 found that 1
in 10 people aged 16 to 34 have been rejected for a job because of online
comments they made on social media websites. A 2014 survey of recruiters found
that 93% of them check candidates' social media postings.Moreover, professor
Stijn Baert ofGhent Universityconducted a field
experiment in which fictitious job candidates applied for real job vacancies in
Belgium. They were identical except in one respect: their Facebook profile
photos. It was found that candidates with the most wholesome photos were a lot
more likely to receive invitations for job interviews than those with the more
controversial photos. In addition, Facebook profile photos had a greater impact
on hiring decisions when candidates were highly educated.These cases have
created someprivacyimplications as to
whether or not companies should have the right to look at employee's Facebook
profiles. In March 2012, Facebook decided they might take legal action against
employers for gaining access to employee's profiles through their passwords.According to
Facebook Chief Privacy Officer for policy, Erin Egan, the company has worked
hard to give its users the tools to control who sees their information. He also
said users shouldn't be forced to share private information and communications
just to get a job. According to the network's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,
sharing or soliciting a password is a violation of Facebook policy. Employees
may still give their password information out to get a job, but according to
Erin Egan, Facebook will continue to do their part to protect the privacy and
security of their users.

College admission

Before
social media, admissions officials in the United States usedSATand
otherstandardized testscores, extra-curricular
activities,letters of recommendation, and high schoolreport cardsto determine
whether to accept or deny an applicant. In the 2010s, while colleges and
universities still use these traditional methods to evaluate applicants, these
institutions are increasingly accessing applicants' social media profiles to
learn about their character and activities. According toKaplan, Inc, a
corporation that provides higher education preparation, in 2012 27% of
admissions officers usedGoogleto learn more about
an applicant, with 26% checking Facebook.Students
whose social media pages include offensive jokes or photos, racist or
homophobic comments, photos depicting the applicant engaging in illegal drug
use or drunkenness, and so on, may be screened out from admission processes.

Political effects

People
are increasingly getting political news and information from social media
platforms. A 2014 study showed that 62% of web users turn to Facebook to find
political news. This social phenomenon allows for political information, true
or not, to spread quickly and easily among peer networks. Furthermore, social
media sites are now encouraging political involvement by uniting like-minded
people, reminding users to vote in elections, and analyzing users' political
affiliation data to find cultural similarities and differences. Social
media can help taint the reputation of political figures fairly quickly with
information that may or may not be true. Information spreads like wildfire and
before a politician can even get an opportunity to address the information,
either to confirm, deny, or explain, the public has already formed an opinion
about the politician based on that information. However, when conducted on
purpose, the spread of information on social media for political means can help
campaigns immensely. TheBarack Obama presidential campaign, 2008, is
considered to be one of the most successful in terms of social media. On the
other hand, negative word-of-mouth in social media concerning a political
figure can be very unfortunate for a politician and can cost the politician
his/her career if the information is very damaging.For example,Anthony Weiner's
misuse of the social media platformTwitterto send
inappropriate messages eventually led to his resignation from U.S. Congress.

Open
forums online have led to some negative effects in the political sphere. Some
politicians have made the mistake of using open forums to try and reach a
broader audience and thus more potential voters. What they forgot to account
for was that the forums would be open to everyone, including those in
opposition. Having no control over the comments being posted, negative
included, has been damaging for some with unfortunate oversight. Additionally,
a constraint of social media as a tool for public political discourse is that
if oppressive governments recognize the ability social media has to cause
change, they shut it down.During
the peak of theEgyptian Revolution of 2011, the Internet and social
media played a huge role in facilitating information. At that time,Hosni Mubarakwas the president
of Egypt and head the regime for almost 30 years. Mubarak was so threatened by
the immense power that the Internet and social media gave the people that the
government successfully shut down the Internet, using theRamses Exchange, for
a period of time in February 2011.

Social
media as an open forum gives a voice to those who have previously not had the
ability to be heard. In 2015, some countries are still becoming equipped with
Internet accessibility and other technologies. Social media is giving everyone
a voice to speak out against government regimes. In 2014, the rural areas in
Paraguay were only just receiving access to social media, such asFacebook. In
congruence with the users worldwide, teens and young adults in Paraguay are
drawn to Facebook and others types of social media as a means to self-express.
Social media is becoming a main conduit for social mobilization and government
critiques because, "the government can't control what we say on the
Internet."

Younger
generations are becoming more involved in politics due to the increase of
political news posted on various types of social media. Due to the heavier use
of social media among younger generations, they are exposed to politics more
frequently, and in a way that is integrated into their online social lives.
While informing younger generations of political news is important, there are
many biases within the realms of social media. It can be difficult for
outsiders to truly understand the conditions of dissent when they are removed
from direct involvement.Social
media can create a false sense of understanding among people who are not
directly involved in the issue. An example of social media creating misconceptions
can be seen during theArab Springprotests. Today's
generation rely heavily on social media to understand what is happening in the
world, and consequently people are exposed to both true and false information.
For example, Americans have several misconceptions surrounding the events of
the Arab Springs movement.Social
media can be used to create political change, both major and minor. For
example, in 2011 Egyptians used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as a means to
communicate and organize demonstrations and rallies to overthrow PresidentHosni Mubarak.
Statistics show that during this time the rate of Tweets from Egypt increased
from 2,300 to 230,000 per day and the top 23 protest videos had approximately
5.5 million views.

Positive and negative
effects of Twitter

People
around the world are taking advantage of social media as one of their key
components of communication. According to King, 67 percent of US citizens ages
12 and up use social media of some type.With
the expansion of social media networks there are many positive and negative
alternatives. As the use of Twitter increases, its influence impacts users as
well. The potential role of Twitter as a means of both service feedback and a
space in which mental health can be openly discussed and considered from a
variety of perspectives.The
study conducted shows a positive outlook for using Twitter to discuss health
issues with a patient and a professional, in this case alcohol. On the other
hand, there can be negatives that arise from the use of social media. If a
clinician prescribes abstinence from alcohol but then posts pictures on social
media of one's own drunken exploits, the clinician's credibility is potentially
lost in the eyes of the patient.In
these two studies, both negative and positive outcomes were examined. Although social
media can be beneficial, it is important to understand the negative
consequences as well.

Use by extremist
groups

The
world is becoming increasingly connected via the power of the Internet;
Facebook launched internet.org, an initiative to gain even the most remote
parts of society access to the World Wide Web. Political movements have begun
to see social media as a major organizing and recruiting tooland the reverse can
be said for society. In 2014, 62% of all web users turned to sites such as
Facebook to gain access to political news.Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also
known as ISIS, has used social media to promote their cause, going as far as
the production of their own online magazine named the Islamic State Report in
an attempt to recruit more fighters.Other
extremist groups such asal-Qaedaand theTalibanare increasingly
using social media to raise funds, recruit and radicalize persons, and it has
become increasingly effective. In Canada, two girls from the city of Montreal
have left their country in an effort to join ISIS in Syria after exploring ISIS
on social media and eventually being recruited. On Twitter, there is an app
called the Dawn of Glad Tidings that users can download and keep up to date on
news about ISIS. Hundreds of users around the world have signed up for the app
which once downloaded will post tweets and hash-tags to your account that are
in support of ISIS. As ISIS marched on the northern region of Iraq, tweets in
support of their efforts reached a high of 40,000 a day.ISIS support
on-line is a defiant factor in the radicalization of youth. Mass media has yet
to adopt the view that social media plays a vital link in the radicalization of
persons in an effort to discredit social media as a legitimate news source.
When tweets supportive of ISIS make their way onto Twitter, they result in 72
re-tweets to the original, which further spreads the destructive message of
ISIS.These
tweets have made their way to the account known as active hashtags, which
further helps broadcast ISIS' message as the account sends out to its followers
the most popular hashtags of the day. Social media is a key factor in the
modern recruiting practices of groups like ISIS.

Patents

There
has been rapid growth in the number of US patent applications that cover new
technologies related to social media, and the number of them that are published
has been growing rapidly over the past five years. There are now over 2000
published patent applications. As many as 7000 applications may be currently on
file including those that haven't been published yet. Only slightly over 100 of
these applications have issued as patents, however, largely due to the
multi-year backlog in examination ofbusiness method patents, patents which outline and
claim new methods of doing business.

In the classroom

Having
social media in the classroom has been a controversial topic in the 2010s. Many
parents and educators have been fearful of the repercussions of having social
media in the classroom.There
are concerns that social media tools can be misused forcyberbullyingor sharing
inappropriate content. As result, cell phones have been banned from some
classrooms, and some schools have blocked many popular social media websites.
However, despite apprehensions, students in industrialized countries are (or
will be) active social media users. As a result, many schools have realized
that they need to loosen restrictions, teach digital citizenship skills, and
even incorporate these tools into classrooms. The Peel District School Board
(PDSB) in Ontario is one of many school boards that has begun to accept the use
of social media in the classroom. In 2013, the PDSB introduced a "Bring
Your Own Device" (BYOD) policy and have unblocked many social media sites.Fewkes and McCabe
(2012) have researched about the benefits of using Facebook in the classroom.Some schools permit
students to usesmartphonesortablet computersin class, as long
as the students are using these devices for academic purposes, such as doing
research.

Wikipedia

In
early 2013,Steve Joordens, a
professor at the University of Toronto, encouraged the 1,900 students enrolled
in his introductory psychology course to add content to Wikipedia pages
featuring content that related to the course. Like other educators,Joordens argued
that the assignment would not only strengthen the site's psychology-related
content, but also provide an opportunity for students to engage in critical
reflection about the negotiations involved in collaborative knowledge
production. However, Wikipedia's all-volunteer editorial staff complained that
the students' contributions resulted in an overwhelming number of additions to
the site, and that some of the contributions were inaccurate.

Facebook and the
classroom

Using
Facebook in class allows for both an asynchronous and synchronous, open speech
via a familiar and regularly accessed medium, and supports the integration of
multimodal content such as student-created photographs and video and URLs to
other texts, in a platform that many students are already familiar with.
Further, it allows students to ask more minor questions that they might not
otherwise feel motivated to visit a professor in person during office hours to
ask.It
also allows students to manage their own privacy settings, and often work with
the privacy settings they have already established as registered users.
Facebook is one alternative means for shyer students to be able to voice their
thoughts in and outside of the classroom. It allows students to collect their
thoughts and articulate them in writing before committing to their expression.Further, the level
of informality typical to Facebook can also aid students in self-expression and
encourage more frequent student-and-instructor and student-and-student
communication. At the same time, Towner and Munoz note that this informality
may actually drive many educators and students away from using Facebook for
educational purposes.

From
a course management perspective, Facebook may be less efficient as a
replacement for more conventional course management systems, both because of
its limitations with regards to uploading assignments and due to some students'
(and educators') resistance to its use in education. Specifically, there are
features of student-to-student collaboration that may be conducted more
efficiently on dedicated course management systems, such as the organization of
posts in a nested and linked format. That said, a number of studies suggest
that students post to discussion forums more frequently and are generally more
active discussants on Facebook posts versus conventional course management
systems like WebCT or Blackboard (Chu and Meulemans, 2008; Salaway, et al.,
2008; Schroeder and Greenbowe, 2009).

Further,
familiarity and comfortability with Facebook is often divided by socio-economic
class, with students whose parents obtained a college degree, or at least
having attended college for some span of time, being more likely to already be
active users.Instructors
ought to seriously consider and respect these hesitancies, and refrain from
"forcing" Facebook on their students for academic purposes.Instructors also
ought to consider that rendering Facebook optional, but continuing to provide
content through it to students who elect to use it, places an unfair burden on
hesitant students, who then are forced to choose between using a technology
they are uncomfortable with and participating fully in the course. A related
limitation, particularly at the level of K-12 schooling, is the distrust (and
in some cases, outright prohibition) of the use of Facebook in formal classroom
settings in many educational jurisdictions. However, this hesitancy towards
Facebook use is continually diminishing in the United States, as the Pew
Internet & American Life Project's annual report for 2012 shows that the
likelihood of a person to be a registered Facebook user only fluctuates by 13
percent between different levels of educational attainment, 9 percent between
urban, suburban, and rural users, only 5 percent between different household
income brackets. The largest gap occurs between age brackets, with 86 percent
of 18- to 29-year-olds reported as registered users as opposed to only 35
percent of 65-and-up-year-old users.

Twitter

Twitter
can be used to enhance communication building and critical thinking. Domizi
(2013) utilized Twitter in a graduate seminar requiring students to post weekly
tweets to extend classroom discussions. Students reportedly used Twitter to
connect with content and other students. Additionally, students found it
"to be useful professionally and personally".Junco, Heibergert,
and Loken (2011) completed a study of 132 students to examine the link between
social media and student engagement and social media and grades. They divided
the students into two groups, one used Twitter and the other did not. Twitter
was used to discuss material, organize study groups, post class announcements,
and connect with classmates. Junco and his colleagues (2011) found that the
students in the Twitter group had higher GPAs and greater engagement scores
than the control group.Gao,
Luo, and Zhang (2012) reviewed literature about Twitter published between 2008
and 2011. They concluded that Twitter allowed students to participate with each
other in class (back channel), and extend discussion outside of class. They
also reported that students used Twitter to get up-to-date news and connect
with professionals in their field. Students reported that microblogging
encouraged students to "participate at a higher level".Because the posts
cannot exceed 140 characters, students were required to express ideas, reflect,
and focus on important concepts in a concise manner. Some students found this
very beneficial. Other students did not like the character limit. Also, some
students found microblogging to be overwhelming (information overload). The
research indicated that many students did not actually participate in the
discussions, "they just lurked".

Impact of retweeting
on Twitter

A
popular component and feature of Twitter is retweeting. Twitter allows other
people to keep up with important events, stay connected with their peers, and
can contribute in various ways throughout social media.When certain posts
become popular, they start to get tweeted over and over again, becoming viral.Ellen DeGeneresis a prime example
of this. She was a host during the 86th Academy Awards,when she took the
opportunity to take a selfie with about twelve other celebrities that joined in
on the highlight of the night,includingJennifer Lawrence,Brad PittandJulia Roberts.This picture went
viral within forty minutes and was retweeted 1.8 million times within the first
hour.This
was an astonishing record for Twitter and the use of selfies, which other
celebrities have tried to recreate. Retweeting is beneficial strategy, which
notifies individuals on Twitter about popular trends, posts, and events.

YouTube

YouTube
is a frequently used social media tool in the classroom (also the second most
visited website in the world). Students can watch videos, answer questions, and
discuss content. Additionally, students can create videos to share with others.
Sherer and Shea (2011) claimed that YouTube increased participation,
personalization (customization), and productivity. YouTube also improved
students' digital skills and provided opportunity for peer learning and problem
solvingEick
et al. (2012) found that videos kept students' attention, generated interest in
the subject, and clarified course content.Additionally, the
students reported that the videos helped them recall information and visualize
real world applications of course concepts.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn
is a professional social network that enables employers and workers to connect.
It was created byReid Hoffmanin 2002 and was
launched on May 5, 2003. LinkedIn is now the world's largest professional
social network with over 300 million members in over 200 countries. The mission
of LinkedIn is to, "connect the world's professionals to make them more
productive and successful."A
lot of people describe LinkedIn as a "professional Facebook", but it
is important to remember that LinkedIn isnotFacebook. Users
tend to avoid informal nicknames and any inappropriate pictures in their
profile. Instead, they use a standard headshot as a profile picture and keep
the content and information as professional and career-focused as possible.Most LinkedIn users
put theirCVonline. Some also
provide a list of the courses they have taken in college or university. Users
can also post articles that they have written, which enables prospective
employers to see their written work.

There
are over 39 million students and recent college graduates on LinkedIn, becoming
the fastest-growing demographic on the site.There are many ways
that LinkedIn can be used in the classroom. First and foremost, using LinkedIn
in the classroom encourages students to have a professional online social
presence and can help them become comfortable in searching for a job or
internship. "The key to making LinkedIn a great social learning tool is to
encourage learners to build credibility through their profiles, so that experts
and professionals won't think twice about connecting with them and share
knowledge."Dedicating
class time solely for the purpose of setting up LinkedIn accounts and showing
students how to navigate it and build their profile will set them up for
success in the future. Next, professors can create assignments that involve
using LinkedIn as a research tool. The search tool in LinkedIn gives students
the opportunity to seek out organizations they are interested in and allow them
to learn more. Giving students the class time to work on their LinkedIn profile
allows them to network with each other, and stresses the importance of
networking. Finally, professors can design activities that revolve around
resume building and interviews. A person's LinkedIn and resume are what
employers look at first, and they need to know how to make a strong first
impression. It's important to learn how to construct a strong resume as soon as
possible, as well as learn strong interviewing skills. Not only is the
information and skills learned in the classroom important, but it is also
important to know how to apply the information and skills to their LinkedIn
profile so they can get a job in their field of study. These skills can be
gained while incorporating LinkedIn into the classroom.

Advertising

Tweets containing
advertising

In
2013, the United KingdomAdvertising Standards Authority(ASA) began to
advisecelebritiesand sports stars to
make it clear if they had been paid to tweet about a product or service by
using the hashtag #spon or #ad within tweets containing endorsements. In July
2013,Wayne Rooneywas accused of
misleading followers by not including either of these tags in a tweet promoting
Nike. The tweet read:"The pitches change. The killer instinct doesn't. Own
the turf, anywhere. @NikeFootball #myground."The tweet was
investigated by the ASA but no charges were pressed. The ASA stated that
"We considered the reference to Nike Football was prominent and clearly
linked the tweet with the Nike brand."When asked about
whether the number of complaints regarding misleading social advertising had
increased, the ASA stated that the number of complaints had risen marginally
since 2011 but that complaints were "very low" in the "grand
scheme."

Censorship incidents

Social
media often features in political struggles to control public perception and
online activity. In some countries,Internet policeorsecret policemonitor or control
citizens' use of social media. For example, in 2013 some social media was
banned inTurkeyafter the TaksimGezi
Park protests. Both Twitter and YouTube were temporarily suspended
in the country by a court's decision. A new law, passed byTurkish
Parliament, has granted immunity to Telecommunications Directorate
(TİB) personnel. The TİB was also given the authority to block access to
specific websites without the need for a court order.Yet TİB's 2014
blocking of Twitter was ruled by the constitutional court to violate free
speech.More
recently, in the2014 Thai coup d'état, the public was explicitly
instructed not to 'share' or 'like' dissenting views on social media or face
prison. In July that same year, in response toWikileaks' release
of a secret suppression order made by theVictorian Supreme Court, media lawyers were quoted in
theAustralianmedia to the effect
that "anyone who tweets a link to the Wikileaks report, posts it on
Facebook, or shares it in any way online could also face charges".

Effects on youth communication

Social
media has affected the way the youth generations communicate. The introduction
of social media has brought forth various forms of lingo.Abbreviations have
been introduced to cut down on time. The commonly known "LOL" has become globally recognized as
the abbreviation for "laugh out loud" thanks to social media.Online linguistics
has changed the way youth communicate and will continue to do so in the future,
as each year new catchphrases andneologismssuch as "YOLO", which
stands for "you only live once", and "BAE", which stands
for "before anyone else" arise and start "trending" around
the world.Other
trends that influence the way youth communicate is through the globally knownhashtags. With the
introduction of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,
the hashtag was created in order to easily organize and search information. As
hashtags such as #tbt ("throwback
Thursday") become a part of online communication, it influenced
the way in which youth share and communicate in their daily lives.Because of these
changes in linguistics and communication etiquette, researchers of media
semiotics have found that this has altered youth's communications habits and
more.Not
only does social media change the way people around the world communicate, it
also alters the way we understand each other. Social media has allowed for mass
cultural exchange and intercultural communication. As different cultures have
different value systems, cultural themes, grammar, and worldviews, they also
communicate differently.The
emergence of social media platforms collided different cultures and their
communication methods together, forcing them to realign in order to communicate
with ease with other cultures.As different
cultures continue to connect through social media platforms, thinking patterns,
expression styles and cultural content that influence cultural values are
chipped away.